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NEW FOR THURSDAY: ‘Lucky Summer’ Campaign Planned For Ocean City

OCEAN CITY – This summer in Ocean City will be the “Lucky Summer of ’13” as the town will continue to focus its message on deals, discounts and free events.

The town’s advertising agency, MGH, reveled last Friday during a Tourism Commission meeting this summer’s marketing campaign will be called “Lucky Summer of ’13”.

Last summer the Ocean City advertised the “Summer of Thanks” that highlighted the value in vacationing in Ocean City.

“One of Ocean City’s great assets and is a huge value to our visitors are all the deals, discounts and free family friendly events that we are looking to expand and grow on year after year,” MGH Account Manager Alison Fiorelli said. “We want to make sure that our potential visitors know that they are really in luck when they are coming to Ocean City. We offer them great deals while they are planning their vacation but then once they get here we are offering free things for them to enjoy with their family and great deals on entertainment and night life, things that will make their entire stay and vacation affordable.”

This summer Ocean City will once again offer a sweepstakes for one lucky family to win an all-expense-paid vacation with other minor prizes given away throughout the summer season.

The “Lucky of Summer of ’13” message will be advertised on TV using a combination of previously recorded and advertised Rodney the Lifeguard commercials where Rodney appears to save people from their everyday life and escape to Ocean City. The difference will be the commercials will end with a different tag that will say, “Go to ococean.com and click on Lucky Summer of ’13 for special deals and discounts.”

“So without having to do new creative we are going to use the spots that we have, so we are going to save that money to put towards more weeks on air,” MGH President Andy Malis said.

MGH Director of Social Ryan Goff took over the presentation to reveal the new initiatives taking place for Ocean City in social media. Besides Ocean City’s existing pages on Facebook and Twitter, new this year will be a Instagram profile.

Instagram is a photo-based social network where users can directly upload and share a photo from their mobile device. Instagram has 90 million active users, 40 million photos uploaded per day, 8,500 likes on photos and 1,000 comments on photos uploaded per second.

Ocean City’s own profile on Instagram will be created and an Instagram feed will be pulled into Ocean City’s Facebook page where photos will be filtered and placed for all to see by a user hashtagging #ocmd to their photo.

“To reward people for participating in the program and using that hashtag, we will select a Instagram photo of the week, and the person that is given that title will receive a Lucky Summer of ’13 T-shirt,” Goff said. “To encourage further usage of the hashtag and the Instgram platform, we would like to create what we are considering Instagram hot spots throughout the town. So in various places, whether it is the boardwalk or businesses, we encourage people to take a photo because it is an Instagram hotspot and upload it right to the Instagram account using the hashtag for a chance to appear on our Facebook page and a chance to win a t-shirt.”

In addition to implementing an Instagram profile, a new program will appear on Ocean City’s Facebook page called Deals of the Week, where exclusive offers and promotions will be shared for Ocean City fans.

The Tourism Commission was enthusiastic over this summer’s new marketing campaign and additions and was in consensus to forward a favorable recommendation for the full Mayor and City Council to approve.

On Monday evening, Malis presented the campaign, and the council voted unanimously to accept it.